Ah, Times Square. Now that was a place-for great theater, cabaret, hotels or just a stroll with a sweetheart below the neon lights. It was also the site of some the nation`s largest and most emotional gatherings, from ringing in the New Year to proclaiming victory over the Nazis. Read more »

By Russell W. Baker, Special to The Christian Science Monitor / June 12, 1989

NEW YORK is a city of ironies. It has enormous numbers of homeless people – and equal numbers of empty apartments. Upward of 50,000 people are without permanent shelter, and countless tens of thousands live doubled or tripled up in crowded apartments. Yet New York City owns more than 5,000 empty buildings, which if fixed up, could eliminate the shortage. Read more »

By Russell W. Baker, Special to The Christian Science Monitor / November 13, 1989

IN a vote overshadowed by the election of New York City’s first black mayor, New Yorkers Tuesday approved a radical restructuring of their government. The move was an effort to comply with a mandate from the United States Supreme Court. By a 55-to-45 percent margin, voters agreed to transfer functions away from a century-old governmental body unique to New York, splitting its powers between the mayor and an expanded City Council.

By Russell Baker, Special to The Christian Science Monitor / December 29, 1989

BUCHAREST, ROMANIA
FOR most of a week, even after dictator Nicolae Ceausescu tried to flee his own country, Romania has been held hostage by a desperate band of assassins. The key figures in the violent resistance to the people’s revolution have been members of the Securitate, the secret police who terrorized a nation for decades. Hard-line Securitate members were given a deadline of 5 p.m. yesterday to surrender their weapons or face emergency courts and immediate execution, Romania’s new leaders warned.

As Romanians settle into their first free new year, there are still grim reminders of the price paid for emancipation.

A park adjoining the famed Belu cemetery has been converted into a graveyard, and hundreds of men with picks and shovels are hard at work on ground blanketed with ice. Wrapped in dark peasant garments, they go about their work with the matter-of-factness shown by many Romanians during these difficult times. Read more »